I talk. A lot. I read. Quite a bit. I roll over and play dead a.k.a sleep. Whenever I can. I am a gourmand. Happily so. And this here's my mouthpiece for everything that catches my eye or I think about. It usually ends up being a doozy.
Cheers!

16 May, 2013

The Curse of the Bored Child

A bored child is a mother's worst nightmare. It's even worse than a child who is throwing a tantrum because at least a tantrum is directed at getting something or a result of something being denied.A child who is bored is a dangerous element in nature and in his mother's life.A child experiencing ennui will look at things differently and objects and ideas hitherto not in his scope of thinking will suddenly appear to him and make him do things that become the bane of his mother's existence and also put him in some amount of danger.Take my very own bored child for example: He walks around half naked most of these because of the heat and suddenly took it upon himself to lash out at everything with his grandfather's belt. He liked the swoosh of the belt as it cut through the air and when I found him he was perilously close to whipping himself on his bare back with a belt that was being thrown about with a lot of energy and speed.A bored child will also drape themselves over their mother in a manner that prohibits that poor woman from doing anything. I mean anything. A loo break becomes manna from the gods. A quick shower becomes a forbidden luxury. One that is disrupted every 2 minutes by a whine or a pounding on the door to give miscellaneous objects since the little emperor wants to be entertained.All the while the bemused mother's busy trying to make sure the soap doesn't get into her eyes and hurrying so much that she almost ends up moisturizing with the conditioner in her haste.When I see my son in these phases I am alarmed since I have NO CLUE how to keep him entertained. I think of cool, open meadows where he can gallop around like an unbridled horse or leap out of the ocean like a dolphin (make that a Great White with jaws agape after a hapless seal).And I often feel sorry for myself because I sure as hell did NOT know WHAT I was getting myself into the day this chap was born.It must be tough being a child, wanting to do so many things and yet having so many restrictions that the adults impose on the immediate environment; especially those which are inexplicable in a child's reckoning.On the other hand, his demeanor and intensity makes me think he can make it big as a cage fighter. Maybe once he's in the cage I can finally put my feet up and read a book or sip an unhurried cuppa tea.A mother can always dream.